ABSTRACT
A useful starting point for this contribution is Sigmund Freud’s paper on ‘Remembering, repeating and working-through’, as it provides a good basis for assessing some of the changes which have taken place in psychoanalytic technique in the years that followed. In his paper Freud points out that, at the start, when he was using hypnosis, the aim of the work was to get the patient to remember, and through remembering, to abreact, to release the pent-up emotions that were associated with the forgotten memories. Transference is seen by Freud at this point only as a piece of repetition of the forgotten past. Freud then introduces the notion of the transference-neurosis, which is the analytically desirable replacement for the patient’s ordinary neurosis. It is very clear that Freud saw construction as a way of getting the significant repressed memories of the patient to the surface.
